4.5/5

Esteban, Trueba,
how does your childhood grow?
With fear and guilt and such hard work
and a love that leaves you low.
In thoughts of grief and thoughts of rage,
and a slump of of broken land,
you will rape your heart out, Esteban,
set life to your demand.

Clara, Clara, clairvoyant,
how does your marriage keep?
With magic silent and so near,
to where your children sleep.
When tragedy has struck your home,
and the bull is in the shop,
reality will find you there,
your disengagement stop.

Humans, humans, high More...

haha, so my sophomore honors english teacher decided he wanted to read a book with us for the first time, so he asked our department head to recommend a book. we all died, because mr. wells could not deal with talking about sex, and mr. hackling knew this, and he assigned this book. i mean, a couple of pages in, there's all this graphic rape in the fields going on! and then there's the creepy ass count . . .

i really loved the book though. it's layered, it's complex, it's beautiful. the imagery More...

Gabriel Garcia Marquez comparisons aside, it's hard to review this book without references to the magical realism and the narrative styles of Latin America.

I truly believe that anyone not familiar with the above mentioned, would likely be a bit thrown, even put off by these influences. Still, this is a brilliantly written story, epic in its truest sense. Covering four generations of women (with a man as the common thread between them), it races through the simplicity of the old world into the c More...

بكرسيّ طائر واتصالات في عالم الأرواح بقية كلارا الحبيبة بالقرب من ترويبا الشيخ الذي تحول تاجه للبياض و قامته للهرم والحزن متكور داخله بعد فقد من أحبها بفعل صفعة , الحنين المنتقل بالأوراق بين الزوجين و الحب الذي يلقي بالفتيات في مواجهة المصائب بقلب قوي و عاطفة جارفة تتبادل القبل على خلفية خوف وفي وسط الثورة , الحياة بجانب من نحب تستحق المجازفة بما تبقى من أعمارنا . من قال أن الحب يضيع وأن هناك شيء يسمى : " فات الأوان" في قاموس العشاق؟ . في الجزء الثالث بعد: "ابنة الحظ"و"صورة عتيقة" تكتب بها إزا More...

من عشق مئة عام من العزلة ربما سيستاء من هذه الرواية لليندي
وهل يمكن أن نحب الروايتين معا !
عني لم استطع حقيقة فالأصل يبقى دائما له ذلك البريق الذي حمل الدهشة تلو الأخرى
الليندي لم تتأثر فقط ولكن الرواية نسخة مقلدة لرواية العظيم ماركيز العمل الذي فاز على إثره بنوبل وترجم إلى لغات عديدة وتوج به بطلا روائيا
لو ذهبت إلى عزلة ماركيز لوجدت قرية ماكوندو الخيالية بينما في أرواح الليندي تحولت للماريات الثلاث .. ماركيز كتب على مدار ستة أجيال أو ثمانية لا أتذكر بينما كتبت الليندي على مدار أربعة أجيال أغلب ش More...

2.5 stars, actually. (Still waiting for Goodreads to give me that half-star option.) Let's be honest, Isabel Allende is chick lit that you're not embarrassed to read on the Metro. It's got just enough faux-Garcia-Marquez, magical-realism-lite charm to fool people into thinking it's moderately intellectual. I don't have a big problem with that (as long as people realize what's going on) because Allende is a fine storyteller. This novel, her first and most famous, is a fairly traditional family sa More...

Allende's first and best work of art. The story of three generations of Trueba women that tells the history of a nation.

During the first 10 pages I was thinking to myself that there is way too much similarity on so many levels to One Hundred Years of Solitude, but why not, since it's the bible of Latin American magical realism?

In addition to Clara, the second Del Valle daughter who forsaw the future, communicated with spirits, and moved objects without touching them, and Blanca, her daughter w More...

I have a really hard time getting into magic realism, I'm more of a realism-realism kind of gal myself, so I was surprised when I started semi getting into this. Although, characteristically, I got more into the less magic/more realistic parts of the novel. I think this book wants to be some type of a feminist novel, but it falls short in so many ways. Now, I am not the type of feminist who goes out looking for feminist novels (big Roth fan here, actually) but I do have a problem with anything t More...

Wow, what a remarkable novel. All over the book's jacket and in online reviews you'll find comparisons to Marquez's 100 Years of Solitude--rightfully so, I think. Both novels span decades and generations of families and are written in the magical realism style.
I can't say that I loved 100 Years of Solitude, but The House of the Spirits is certainly the best book I've read this year, my favorite book I've read this year.
I loved each character, particularly the women whose lives are the subject of More...

I remember starting this once and becoming utterly disgusted with something in the first chapter and I put it away for many years. It just wasn't the right time. This is why I firmly believe that instead of slogging through a book you aren't enjoying you should put it down. Maybe you will return to it one day and discover something, maybe not, but in any event it's better than torturing yourself.

Later, I got hooked on Allende through her more recent novels and eventually returned to this, her ve More...

Trueba family is impressive. I enjoyed this book so much. It’s huge, eccentric, emotional, spiritual and historical. It’s magnificent. Characters are deep, mystical, love and hate for each other is binding them all.

4 generations of strong women lived in this turbulent South American country - Chile, within memories and spirits, hard and painful life and difficult men, with Esteban Trueba as the constant leader of the pack. The story itself is so deep, as each one of them has a different aura an More...

Allende is someone usually found in the hands of women. I think she can be for everyone. The mixture of country, unrest, family, culture and the occult are perfect. I think the fact that Isabelle Allende is the daughter of Salvador Allende Gossens only adds to the richness of her history and in turn her writing.
Side note: Salvador Allende Gossens was the president of Chili from 1970 to 9/11 1973 when he was assassinated in a coup d'état. Parties involved with the overthrow: Augusto José Ramón P More...

Li este livro em adolescente e é daqueles que deixam resíduos na memória. Ou seja, não nos lembramos da história completa mas lembramo-nos que deixou muito boa impressão.
:)

one of the best I have read to Isabel Allende....
i like the spiritual sides in Clara character.....
beauty and sensitivity of Rosa...
and Jaime loneliness......

Translated by Magda Bogin. Four generations of an aristocratic and extremely eccentric Chilean family, tied together by the patriarch, Esteban Truebe, a hardworking conservative who marries Clara and becomes a wealthy man and a senator. His wife, a mystical clairvoyant with a loving heart, passes her peculiarities to her descendants, much to Trueba’s rage and dismay. Even as he rails again the communists and what he sees as the ridiculous behavior of his sons (one a dreamer and mystic, the other More...

I really wish I could say this is an amazing book, worthy of so much thoughtful praises, etc., but that would just be a lie. Given how much I enjoy good writing—and this book definitely has it all, like a beautifully crafted essay that speaks with prominent characters and conflicts between generations of families—it’s kind of weird for me to say this book is just okay. I mean, the only thing I like from this entire book is the language: the metaphors, descriptions, the lines that sound so poetic More...

Isabel Allende, The House of the Spirits (Knopf, 1985)

The House of the Spirits has set a new record at Goat Central. I have been trying to read this book for three years. Three solid years (well, just shy. Another two weeks and I would have made the anniversary). Why did I keep trying? Because when I'm actually reading it, it's not half bad. But every time I put it down, there is nothing, not a single thing, about it that makes me want to pick it up again. So I'll end up going six to eight month More...

Ingeniously intertwined story, epic in all respects, covering three plus generations, filled to the brim with rich characters, immense heart, and fantastic imagination. Perfectly blends latin melodrama romance with matriarchal power, the corruption of power and the male species, the suppression of women, the power of love, the power of an opinion, politics, history, social commentary, dictatorship, the effects of time, the power of family, and the almost supernatural feeling that can exist betwe More...

This book gave me insomnia when I was reading it, I was so unsettled and fascinated by it. The setting is beautiful and dramatic and the atmosphere is magical. The politics are horrible, typical Latin American stuff, and Allende should know, as a close relative of the murdered socialist Chilean president, Salvador Allende.
It's an incredible family saga, a powerful history of characters plagued by their own, I guess, characters. You hate some and you admire some, still, they are all interesting More...

Compared to other books I've read from Allende, this one seems different and very reminiscent of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's "100 years of solitude" because of the intense magical realism that permeates the book.
Even though I liked the book, it didn't impress me as much as 100 years did, but come on, it's GGM, no one compares. Aside from that, I love Allende very much, and her narrative is always captivating. Clara is an amazing character, very peculiar and improbable.
The book gets good somewhere More...

With Marquez, the book is nothing short of an effort to redefine the relationship between time, space, and consciousness. Many find this a kind of glorified soap-opera. This is a misreading. Allende is trying to provide a third world redefinition of the relationship between freedom and determinacy, between history and consciousness, between fact, fiction, and the truth, between past, future and the now.

By all means enjoy the story -- and then let it seep into your theoretical life.

As a politica More...

I really enjoyed this book. A lot of people compare it to Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude, and while I see the similarities, I think this book has its own distinct story. Magical realism is a style used by many Latin American writers (or so I've been told), so I can't believe that the two books are the same based on that similarity alone. Additionally, the development of characters and the use of first person narration by Allende in parts of the book gives it more depth of More...

really beautiful magic realism about facism, socialism and relatioinships between generations of women... absorbing and uses form to talk about women and other kinds of knowledge.... and politics

YOU HAVE TO READ THIS BOOK!!!

A weighty 'tome' indeed, and I was not always convinced by the translation, which had me re-reading sentences and phrases. The abundance of detail and lists is somewhat overwhelming, and I never really got a handle on the personalities of the first 3 women in the saga, though Alba, the final 'heroine' seems more real. Maybe that's the point, though, and I very much liked the sentiments expressed in the epilogue, to the effect that revenge is futile, and that it is essential to break that cruel, More...

Tener un libro de este calibre entre las manos y disponer del tiempo necesario para devorarlo, en poco tiempo, casi de un tir��n, rodeado de un entorno que de tan perfecto parezca mentira, es de las mejores cosas que me pod��an pasar ��ltimamente.

He aprovechado un mini-viaje a Oporto para leer La casa de los esp��ritus, en la terraza llena de cesped y hamacas con vistas a la catedral y a multitud de tejados desvencijados de colores de un bonito albergue portugu��s. Aunque con esa infraestructur

More...

This book, Allende� s first novel, follows the fictional Trueba family through four generations. Astute readers who know something of Chilean history will no doubt recognize that the family history echoes the 20th-century history of Chile, which Allende� s own family was part of. Her father� s cousin was Salvador Allende, the president of Chile who was overthrown by a coup d�

The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende
I really enjoyed this book. I read it shortly after writing a paper relating to the Pinochet dictatorship, and I have always had a special interest in Chile, so that probably influenced my opinion. Nonetheless, I believe I would have liked it anyway-- it was a creative and interesting novel. Because of the limited availablity in my local libary, the particular book I read was a large print edition, but I don't believe there were any changed to the text. More...

Isabel Allende’s novel The House of the Spirits begins in Chile at the turn of the century, and follows the women of the Trueba family through three generations. The book is a good example of magical realism, and seems to be heavily influenced by the writing style of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude. Magical realism is a genre that works best when the magical elements are casually intertwined with everyday reality. Allende, however, takes a very literal stance on magic, and More...

The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende is a powerful read. From the beginning to the end, we are taken to and fro the capital in Chile to a remote village known as Las Tres Marías as we see an entire family develop, grow, and shrink due to political turmoil and family strife. We see the unexpected as the attention is shifted from Clara, the young and semi-supernatural young lady to Esteban Trueba, who slowly becomes an unwavering and unforgiving diplomat of his country. We are introduced one More...